What is in Kelvin's Head?

I believe in Europe

21/05/2014

I believe in the European Union as a great positive in our lives because it is in the process of minimising two things – roaming charges for mobile phones and war in western Europe.

And a whole lot more of course too. But that seems to encapsulate why I care about Europe. I want forms of good governance which can benefit the citizens of these countries and I also want these countries, which have historically been at war to put that behind them and live at peace.

Now, in saying that I want good governance in Europe, I’m not of a belief that we’ve got that right yet. (Nor am I of the belief that government at Holyrood or Westminster is perfect either). It seems clear that there will, for a long time, be the need for reform of the European institutions. However, that is a process that is not merely worth being a half-hearted part of but worth making commitments to, in order to be able to shape and mould things as they change.

I’ve been wrong about some things in Europe. I thought the Euro was a good idea and though I still like the notion of a single currency, I’ve also seen very clearly that independent nations cannot realistically share their money without having a common economic policy. Having seen it go spectacularly wrong in Europe, it seems obvious to me that the same mistakes can’t be allowed to come to pass within these islands. States which have economic independence need their own currency for their own good.

However, I’m suspicious of the nation state itself. It seems to me to be a positive good that the nation state (The United Kingdom) that I live in, is part of a multiple set of identities in which British nationalism is compromised from both within and without. Nationalisms frighten me. I want them to be compromised by other commitments.

So, I’ve voted in the European Election. (I had a postal vote this time). That I had some enthusiasm for voting was tempered a little by my having little enthusiasm for any of the options on the ballot paper. I did manage to cast a vote and I think that it is important to do so even if one has to hold one’s nose whilst voting, either metaphorically or physically.

I believe in Europe and Europe needs us to believe in it. It isn’t just mobile phone charges that matter, of course. Things like global warming need much stronger action than they are currently getting and a European Parliament can and should be one focus for working to make the planet work. And our continent is far from free from conflict either. However the structures of the EU are part of a political settlement, unsure and vulnerable though it is, which have prevented the horrors of all out war that directly affected my parents and grandparents.

Vive L´Europe! Long live the European Union!

EU, European elections, European Union, mobile phone roaming charges

7 responses to “The Archbishop, the gays and their sins”

fakepete

25/02/2015

Nicely put, he seems to feel entitled to freedom from criticism. It’s a censorious attitude that I thought the CoE put behind it when most of us learned to laugh at the Life of Brian and it is contradicted by the church’s own call to participation in democracy.

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Andrew

25/02/2015

The poor old Arch. He really is an old school establishment man who cant really understand where the deference has gone. The Green Report, the other Reports on the ‘future’ of the Church of England and the ‘Conversations’ all speak of a deeply controlling man who is deeply frustrated that there is no control to be had any more. When the split comes he will probably want to make what is left into a more confessional and defined group (the evangelicals have always wanted that) but I suspect the Church that will emerge will be more liberal than he likes even if it is outwardly more evangelical and enthusiast than the Church of England has been for a very long time

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1. fakepete
  
  27/02/2015
  
  @Andrew I’d switch that around. Justin Welby is someone who does not show deference to what has in Western society become The New Orthodoxy (definitions on a postcard please), this is why he provokes such puzzlement, and thus consternation and anger.
  
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2. Daniel Berry, NYC
  
  03/03/2015
  
  Andrew, I don’t see how that can be, really: he hasn’t the pedigree to be “an old school establishment man.” He’s a late vocation who had been a high-power figure in the corporate world–meaning he’s undoubtedly accustomed to having the last word.
  
  As to his attitudes toward gay people, I’m disgusted with him and the many others who accept the natural sciences’ contradiction of bible, but just can’t bring themselves to the same place with the behavioral and social sciences, and even with medicine itself–ignoring along the way that homosexuality is found in upward of 450 animal species besides our own. Otherwise they seem perfectly comfortable with dispensing with the savagery found in much of “holy scripture.”
  
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Dharma Nicodemus Cuthbert

26/02/2015

I love the line “who am I to judge them for their sins, if they have sins” makes us seem angelic compared to those who have children. Only one problem we, according to the bible commit sin just by being together. Does this mean that he is disagreeing with orthodoxy, and we are not sinning by being together.
God bless all and may his words of love bring more, troubled, souls to him.

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1. JCF
  
  28/02/2015
  
  “Only one problem we, according to the bible commit sin just by being together.”
  
  I *think* you meant “according to false translations/interpretations of the bible…” (or should have meant).
  
  “Being together”: can we call sex, “sex”? If not, why not? [And can we call marital sex (same- or opposite-sex) “marital sex”?]
  
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Daniel Berry, NYC

03/03/2015

best line for me:

You say that stuff and you are going to get people observing that there’s a lot more archbishops who claim that gay people are their friends than gay people who claim archbishops are their friends.

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